One of the divers with whom I have talked told me that somehow diving took the life out of a man, and that he had never known a diver who did much smiling. "I have an impression myself," he added, "that I shall go down one of these days without coming up again." In truth, before my wanderings among them were ended, I came to the conclusion that divers, as a class, are taciturn, grave, sober-faced men, but I also found that the calling they follow has its humorous as well as its serious side, although too often the humor has a dash of the grewsome to it, as was the case with a diver who went down to work on the steamship Viscaya, sunk in a collision off Barnegat Light. It was a difficult job, so two divers were sent down--one of them to remain on deck in sixty feet of water, to act as second tender to the other diver who went below. The latter had been at work but a few minutes when three jerks came over the life-line. He was so unnerved when hauled up to the deck that he forgot that he was still in sixty feet of water, and signalled to have his helmet removed. When both divers had been hauled to the surface, he said that while he was working through a gangway, he had seen two huge objects coming toward him; and nothing could dissuade him from the belief that he had encountered two submarine ghosts--until the other diver went down and discovered that there was a mirror at the end of the gangway, and that the diver had seen the reflection of his own legs, vastly enlarged, coming toward him. The veteran from whom I had this story told me also of the amusing mistake made by a diver, who, much against his will, had been sent down to recover a body from a wreck. Some divers have an ineradicable dread of the dead, and never handle them when they can possible avoid it. He was one of this kind, and the water being very thick, he went groping gingerly about in the cabin. After a lengthy search he found a body, and fastening a line around it, gave the signal to haul it up. When he followed and took off his helmet a large hog lay on the deck. He had tied the line around it, thinking it was the body he was looking for. After that he was always called the "pork" diver. His former comrades have likewise many amusing stories to relate of a diver of other days, Tom Brintley by name, who, though a competent man and a good fellow, was a little too fond of stimulants. On one occasion he went down while in his cups, and the men above not knowing his condition, became seriously alarmed when several hours passed by without their receiving any signals from him or any response to those they made to him. Another diver, sent down to look for him, found him lying on his back at the bottom of the ocean, sixty feet below the surface, fast asleep!